Avoid Last-Minute Hassles With These Carpet Pre-Installation Tips

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Okay, so you’ve ordered carpet with the installation. Now you just have to prepare your room (or rooms, if you ordered plenty of carpeting) for the installation process. While you could sit around and wait for the installers to arrive, that will just slow things down. The sooner you get those spaces prepped for your carpeting, the faster the installation will go. Here’s what you need to do.

Remove The Old Carpeting

If you want to save some money on the installation, you can do so by removing the old carpeting. In most cases, the installers will charge per hour that they work. Since removing the carpeting takes time – maybe an hour or two at most, as long as everything goes well, you can save some money by doing this yourself. However, before you rip the old carpeting up, you need to do a few basic tasks first.

Start by removing all of the furniture from the room. This is the obvious step since you can’t remove the flooring if there are things sitting on top of it.

Vacuum the carpeting once the room is empty. This will keep any dust, dirt, and debris from becoming airborne during the removal process

Cut the carpeting into four-foot strips. You might be tempted to just rip everything out in one piece. That’s a good way to hurt yourself. Take a utility blade and slice the carpeting and the pad into these strips and then physically remove them from your home, rolling them up as you do so. Find a place to discard them. This is the tricky part. If you have a small amount of carpeting, you can place it in garbage bags and your regular trash service will take care of them. Otherwise, you’ll need to find a local dump to dispose of them (which might cost extra) or call your standard trash service and schedule a large pickup.

Repair the Subfloor

Again, this is something that you can leave to the experts, who you hired as part of yourcarpet with installation package. You could also do it yourself, as long as you know how. Examine your subfloor looking for cracks and uneven sections. If you find any, repair them. However, some minor cracks or small issues may not matter, since you’ll have carpeting installed over them.

Handle Any Other Repairs

If you want to repaint the room, do any other type of remodeling, or tackle any issues within the room, now is the time to do them. The last thing that you want is to end up with wall paint on your new carpeting! If you’re worried about the installers scratching or nicking your new paint job, don’t. Even if they leave a few small marks, you will be able to buff them out or touch them up. This is easier to do with new paint than with old paint.